Johanna Writes Madrid

Squashed Popcorn

I am a formerly proud puffy piece of popcorn which has been dropped onto the ground, speared by a stiletto heel, angrily shaken off, and then peed on by a dog before finally being squashed into the cement by a grumpy old man. This is the state that apartment hunting in Barcelona with two children has reduced me to.

At this point I mainly remember a blurry haze of whining (Nico), screaming (Luca), vomiting (also Luca) and rain. Also a hotel room that looked as though about 800 synthetic zebras were slaughtered in order to decorate it.

You are probably guessing by now that we still do not have a place to live in Barcelona. We must have seen about a dozen different apartments. Some were very nice but looked as though they had been constructed on the set of Fight Club.  Others were in great neighborhoods but appeared to have been built for a family of moles who had no use for either light or space to turn around in.

Apparently during Franco's era, people were encouraged to have a lot of kids but few could afford to house them properly in the cities. The result are warrens of small and dark bedrooms all connected by long, narrow and maze-like corridors. The kitchens are usually the size of broom closets (rarely do urban Spanish kitchens have enough room to even put a kitchen table in) and many of the bathrooms don't have bathtubs which for me is an absolute necessity. There is also a major lack of closet space.

I am finding that these deprivations can seriously compromise my decision making skills. An apartment could be made out of Tinker Toys but if it had a giant kitchen, it would probably still go on my "To consider" list. Or it could have enormous closets and have me jumping up and down with delight despite the fact that the living room looks out on an elementary school playground (and YES we did see such an apartment).

To make matters worse, we did find what seems to be the perfect apartment, only to be told the next day that the agency requires a five year contract. The longest I've lived in one place in the past 16 years is for three years in Tokyo. I'd love to stay in the same place for five years but the chances of that happening don't seem high enough to risk signing that sort of agreement (with the prospect of losing thousands of euros at stake).

Last night I had a dream in which I had just gotten married in a dress that I thought was incredibly elegant and classy. For some reason I walked home alone from the wedding, only to pass by the Disney Store, glance inside and see that the dress I was wearing was an exact replica of Snow White's. Anyone can deduce that I am feeling the pressure. 

Recently Reading:

The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa

Lit by Mary Karr

Best Food Writing 2009

Recently Cooking: (By the way, if I link to a recipe here, you can assume it is seriously yummy!)

Chicken and Dumplings

 

Buried in chestnuts and snot

This week I peeled approximately 400 chestnuts for a chestnut/chorizo/saffron soup that I made for some friends. It was delicious but Good God I will never ever do it again. The skin under my fingernails is still sore from peeling back the shells (husks?) of all those chestnuts. Luckily my friend Shannon was here visiting from Switzerland and she helped me do it.

 

Other than that, Luca has regressed back to waking up to eat every two hours throughout the night and Nico has a cold but refuses to blow his nose. He is also very worried that someone will try to borrow the baby from us even though I’ve assured him that this will not be happening (although now that I see it in print, it doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, at least between the hours of 11pm and 8am- anyone interested?) The solution, Nico has decided, is to make a “tag” for Luca so that everyone will know that he belongs to us. The tag will say “This baby is not for sharing!” and we will glue it to Luca’s hand using Elmer’s School Glue. That is the current plan anyway.

 

Alex is on an all-expenses paid invited trip to China. The poor man just has it so rough. In the meantime, I’m living on easy street with two small sick children and nothing but a part-time Icelandic babysitter to ease the pain. I know that plenty of people have it much worse (single mothers and inhabitants of mental asylums for example) but I’m still wallowing in self-pity.

 

This next week I’m hoping to post a little piece I’ve been working on all about the cultural differences in garbage disposal between New York, Japan, Switzerland and Spain. It promises to be riveting and very dirty indeed!

 

Loco for Loquats

 

Throughout this pregnancy I've had a real thing for fruit. Now before you get annoyed and think that I'm one of those pregnant women who only crave healthy food, I should also mention that I've also had a real thing for chocolate and a real thing for cheese and a real thing for peanut butter and a real thing for lemon curd bars and so on and so forth. When I was pregnant with Nico we lived in Japan and the only kinds of fruits that we could buy without going into debt were apples and bananas. In Spain however, just like in the US, there's always a great selection of seasonal fruits at reasonable prices. Recently I had to write about loquats (nisperos in Spanish) for the Spanish food/wine magazine that I write for and having never tasted a loquat, I got curious and bought some to try. Turns out that if you get good ones, they're absolutely delicious (sort of sweet and tart at the same time). While eating one the other day, the idea of making an entire loquat-themed dinner for friends popped into my head. 

First I made a salad out of spinach, goat cheese, sliced loquats, toasted pine nuts and serrano ham. To counteract a bit of the tartness of the loquats, I mixed them with the goat cheese and some grated palm sugar (brown sugar could be used as well) and set them aside as I prepared the rest of the salad. For a dressing I just used some almond oil and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

For my loquat dessert, I was inspired by this recipe for loquats poached in raspberry syrup. However, instead of serving it with shortbread, I made shortcake biscuits (Joy of Cooking recipe) and served the poached loquats with the biscuits and whipped cream, strawberry shortcake style. Delicious!!

Mint Oreo Cookies

I´ve been obsessed with sandwich cookies lately. My latest creation are homemade mint oreos- utterly delicious!

I used this recipe.  Instead of the vegetable shortening based cream filling however, I used this vanilla cream filling which has marscapone cheese. To give the minty flavor I added a teaspoon of peppermint abstract to the chocolate cookie dough and 1-2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh mint to the marcapone cream (I also omitted the vanilla extract from the marscapone cream recipe). These are so worth the extra trouble!

Gazpacho

We just got back from a wonderful to trip to Bali!  In the meantime, to celebrate our return to Spain, I decided to cook up some gazpacho. Here is my recipe-

Gazpacho Invented by A Person From Utah
-4 lbs ripe tomatoes (peeled, seeded and coarsely chopped).
-1/2 onion
-1 green pepper

Put the above items in a blender and puree. (BTW, you can easily peel tomatoes by submerging them in boiling water for a minute or two after which the skins should come off easily.)

Add the following ingredients to the tomato puree-
-3/4 cup diced cucumber
-3/4 cup diced celery
-1/4 cup red wine vinegar
-1 cup bread crumbs
-1 cup tomato sauce
-2 cloves minced garlic
-1/4 cup olive oil
-1/2 cup chopped black olives

Garnish with basil leaves and crumbled goat cheese.